Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There is a lot to absorb from this book. After having spent the last two months reading it and applying tips from it, I wish I'd read the last chapter first since it summarizes everything. It takes the mountain of overwhelming knowledge and gives a simple path forward. Since reading this book, I have a more holistic view of my yard. I can see I've already made some mistakes in my yard, but it is exciting to begin to see results already. Instead of following the usual route of planting rows of veggies, I've started working on symbiotic blends of nitrogen fixers, vines, and other roles. Today I picked up a cheap bird feeder and post from a hardware store and put up a quick bird feeder over a dry, weedy patch in the back. I look forward to seeing how well the author's claim that doing this will lead to passive, ongoing returns in the form of birds' fertilizing the barren area with their poop and their weeding the area as some scratch around the ground looking for fallen seeds. His urban ideas are incredible, too. Don't miss out on that chapter, even though it's tucked in just before the end. He has a few pages devoted to what you can do with the "hell strip" between the road and sidewalk (usually just used for a mailbox and cable tv lines). Don't skip the observation step he gives in an incredible several pages and sidebar. While we did some of this work, I wish we'd done even more extensive up-front observation. It turned out we had to overhaul our plans once the people came out and marked the utility lines. They weren't where we thought they were originally. But I'm so glad this book showed us how to find out these things early on. It would be a shame to plant an expensive tree and pour water and resources into it only to have it uprooted later on. If there is one reason to buy this book, it's because it will shift your perspective away from seeing gardening as a chore with unending maintenance. Instead, by working with nature instead of against it, problems can become signals, temporary obstacles, or just part of the normal flow. The book is pragmatic, realistic, backed with science and research, and a lot of fun. Get it, read it, and try it out.